Fourth-quarter 2004 traffic at LegalMedsOnline.com, a comparison shopping site for pharmaceuticals, rose 118% quarter-to-quarter to 1.28 million, up from 585,000 in Q3. LegalMedsOnline, which charges consumers a monthly subscription fee ranging from $4.63 to $24.95, edged out e-retailer Drugstore.com in the pharmacy/drugs category. Drugstore.com`s Q4 traffic for pharmaceutical products totaled 1.15 million, down 7.3% from 1.24 million in Q3, comScore Networks Inc. reports.

ComScore provided the traffic data for LegalMedsOnline and Drugstore in a list of the top 15 pharmacy web sites in terms of traffic taken from a recent study it conducted of more than 3,000 online pharmacies. The study notes that overall Q4 traffic to pharmacy sites reached 17.4 million, up 14% from Q3.

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But the growth rates for individual sites vary widely, comScore says. In its list of the top 15 sites, seven showed gains in traffic, six showed declines, and two had no prior-quarter figures available for comparison. The study covered only traffic for pharmaceutical products, leaving out traffic for general merchandise at multi-category sites like Drugstore and Walgreens.com.

CanadaPharmacy.com led in the number of Q4 visitors, with 1.39 million, up 7.4% from 1.3 million in Q3, followed by LegalMedsOnline and Drugstore.